“In trouble” is the exact way Richard Childress Racing owner Richard Childress explained it over Kyle Busch‘s radio following the July 20 NASCAR Cup Series race at Dover Motor Speedway.
“(We) gotta get some racecars,” Childress relayed. “We are in trouble. Period.”
Childress emphasized that the team “needs to get some racecars” as Busch chases the playoff cut line and Austin Dillon seeks a win over the next five races.
But RCR’s problems and the subsequent relative lack of results can be traced back much further than 2025.
You could choose to start on the tragic day of Feb. 18, 2001, when seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt was killed in a last-lap crash in the Daytona 500.
From the time Earnhardt rejoined the Childress team in 1983 to his death in 2001, the No. 3 won 69 races and seven championships. RCR was the poster boy for Chevrolet in stock car racing, and as quickly as Earnhardt became an Elvis-esque figure who became bigger than NASCAR itself, RCR was a similar giant.
You could also start during the offseason of 2013, when an eventual champion and 60-time race winner named Kevin Harvick left RCR for Stewart-Haas Racing.
RCR hasn’t won a title since Earnhardt’s seventh in 1994 and has only scored 12 victories at the Cup level in the 11-and-a-half seasons since Harvick left.
Losing generational talents in Earnhardt and Harvick likely didn’t help the team, but even the best drivers can only do so much with the aforementioned vehicles that aren’t up to par with what they used to be.
Earnhardt was still a great driver after he won his seventh title, but over the last six years of his career, he only won 12 races, including a two-year stretch in 1997 and 1998 when his only win came in the Daytona 500.
Earnhardt’s relative slump coincided with the rise of Jeff Gordon and Hendrick Motorsports in the 1990s. As the ’90s turned into the 2000s, it was HMS carrying the torch for Chevrolet.
Earnhardt’s struggles in the late ’90s coincided with RCR running a second full-time team with Mike Skinner and the No. 31. As the years went on, RCR continued to expand its Cup operation to three and then four full-time cars before downsizing back to two in 2018.
Earnhardt’s untimely death gave way to Harvick, who was forced into one of the most pressure-packed situations in racing history in February 2001.
In 13 seasons at RCR, Harvick mustered 23 wins before collecting the final 37 of his career in just 10 years with SHR.
Ryan Newman did manage to snag a Championship 4 berth in 2014, but absent Harvick, a driver lineup up of Newman, Paul Menard and Dillon in addition to subpar cars didn’t set the world on fire.
Busch, who came to RCR in 2023 after leaving Joe Gibbs Racing, won three races before the halfway point of 2023 but hasn’t gotten back to victory lane or the playoffs since.
The other drivers who have piloted RCR’s Chevrolets through the years have been solid, but not able to elevate the team back to a championship-caliber level. Even Tyler Reddick, who left RCR for 23XI Racing in 2023, couldn’t manage to get higher than 13th in points with the team. If you leave out Harvick, Reddick and Busch, RCR has won a total of only 17 races since Earnhardt’s death in 2001.
In many ways, modern RCR could be compared to the state RFK Racing was in before Brad Keselowski became a co-owner. After a dominant run in the ’90s and 2000s, Roush Racing began to go downhill at the beginning of the 2010s. Its struggles were only exacerbated when Matt Kenseth left for JGR in 2013.
For the purpose of this comparison, Kenseth could be Harvick. The young Ricky Stenhouse Jr. could be compared to Dillon, a multi-time champion in the lower series who found some success but couldn’t carry the team to the heights it once reached while driving an iconic car.
Busch might be compared to Greg Biffle in the waning years of his career. It appears that Busch’s best years are behind him, but he still shows flashes of excellence from time to time and has, at least, stayed inside the top 20 playoff picture over the last two years, which, at the moment, could be the worst two-year stretch of his career.
If not for Dillon’s wild win at Richmond in 2024, it would be over two years since RCR’s last win. That’s how long it’s been since Busch has been to victory lane at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway in June 2023.
Busch is in the twilight of his career, and you could argue that Dillon has yet to have a breakout season. But both drivers can be and have been better than what they are right now.
No matter where you place the starting point of RCR’s downfall, the one constant seems to be what Childress is most worried about: the speed of his cars.
ECR Engines came under fire from AJ Allmendinger after an engine failure at Kansas Speedway in May. Busch has suffered through multiple races during his tenure at RCR where his car is barely capable of running inside the top 25.
Busch has proven he can win at RCR. Dillon has proven that he can catch lightning in a bottle when given the opportunity. With five races left in the regular season, Busch is 18th on the playoff grid and Dillon is 28th.
RFK showed that it’s possible to resurrect a team that has fallen behind. Whether it’s Dillon trading a firesuit for a suit and tie, Busch rekindling some old magic or a top prospect in Jesse Love becoming RCR’s next big superstar, there are plenty of personnel options for the team to choose from.
At some point, the chariots that gladiators ride have to be able to keep up with their pilots.
Neither Earnhardt nor Harvick are walking into Welcome, N.C., anytime soon to fix things. It’s up to RCR to find a fix and see if it can rewind the clock to the glory days.
A member of the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA), Samuel also covers NASCAR for Yardbarker, Field Level Media, and Heavy Sports. He will attend the University of Arkansas in the fall of 2025.